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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786740">who else is going to be with you (when you breathe your last)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark'>explosionshark</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Adventure Time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Discussion of Mortality, F/F, Missing Scene, Pre-Stakes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:54:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,389</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786740</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Stakes miniseries.</p><p>Marcie asks Bonnie if she would ever help her die. Kind of, not really.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Princess Bubblegum/Marceline</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>119</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>who else is going to be with you (when you breathe your last)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/AttackGrandpa/gifts">AttackGrandpa</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this was another prompt fill for a follower on tumblr! the prompt was for a bubbline + "a kiss to give up control"</p><p>the missing conversation that marceline alludes to in ep1 of Stakes has always gotten under my skin. so that's what this is. </p><p>title from a line in emma ruth rundle's incredible song "marked for death"</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You want to <em>what</em>?” Bonnie winces at the panic in her voice, the way it almost snaps her words in half. She hears her own voice in her head — <em>I’m trying to be less mean — </em>and clamps her molars down over the side of her tongue, to hold back the other words crowding the back of her throat.</p><p>One look at Marceline proves it’s the right move to make. She shuffles, looking tense and anxious at once, and Bonnie knows with total certainty that if this were any other point in their relationship the conversation would already be a lost cause. Before, this could only have escalated into a dramatic fight, followed by a period of tortured silence that would have lasted anywhere between a couple weeks and a couple decades.</p><p>But instead Marceline pauses too. She flexes her hands, takes a deep breath she doesn’t need, and clarifies with slow, measured speech, “I didn’t say I wanted to do it now. I said I’d thought about it before and I was wondering if it was something you might be able to help me with. Like, someday. If it felt right.”</p><p>Two answers bubble up inside Bonnie.</p><p>The first:</p><p>Of <em>course</em> she could handle this. Vampirism is, at its core, a type of infectious disease and Bonnie is Ooo’s foremost epidimeologist and biomedical scientist. She has created and cured more diseases than she can remember off-hand. Already, methods of identifying, isolating, and eradicating Marceline’s vampirism are firing off inside her head. It would be a massive challenge; there’s so much she has to learn, so many variables. It would require rigorous experimentation, hundreds of hours research, weeks in her lab pouring over data models. It would be enormously difficult and intensely satisfying to get right. The fantasy alone is heady, overwhelming - Bonnie feels her heartbeat increasing at the mere thought of it.</p><p>The second:</p><p>Why would she <em>ever </em>do that? Why would Marceline <em>want </em>it? She has to know that “curing” her vampirism would kill her eventually, doesn’t she? Is she unhappy? Is she in pain? Doesn’t she know what it would do to Bonnie, to lose her like that? How could she <em>ever </em>ask Bonnie to do something like this - to give her up right when things were getting back on track? To live on, endlessly, alone? </p><p>Bonnie swallows again, hard, and presses the heel of her palm against the place on her chest her heart thrums beneath. She says, carefully, “I’m having a hard time understanding why you would want this. Can you please explain?”</p><p>It’s a little stiff, too formal for them, but better than blurting out any of the recriminations and desperate pleas bouncing around in her head. She’s proud for how calm she sounds, despite feeling like she’s just swallowed a stick of lit dynamite.</p><p>Marceline runs a hand through her hair and floats in an agitated circle around her. She seizes Bonnie by the elbow, guides her over to the edge of the bed and pushes her down to sit on it.</p><p>“You’ve never thought about it before? Like… dying? Not having to do this forever?” Marceline asks, gnawing on her lip.</p><p>And Bonnie has, certainly. There’s been more than a few times where she’s almost died - experiments gone wrong, monsters who’ve nearly overwhelmed her, the Lich, countless other enemies or accidents that could have ended her life.</p><p>But those kinds of thoughts aren’t what Marceline is talking about — clearly.</p><p>But there’s one thing…</p><p>“This?” Bonnie asks, voice strained, as she gestures to the space between them.</p><p>“What? No, no,” Marceline looks aghast, reaches out for Bonnie’s hand and finally sits next to her, pulling their clasped hands into her lap. Her grip is cold, but the look in her eyes is warm, if a bit desperate. “This is… I <em>love </em>this. I don’t want to-to <em>escape </em>this.”</p><p>“But you want to escape something,” Bonnie says levelly, proud that she had gotten the words out without lacing them with accusation. </p><p>“I… no, I mean, Bonnie…” Marceline trails off, looking frustrated, unexpectedly vulnerable. It makes Bonnie’s chest ache. She rubs her thumb into Marceline’s palm and makes herself wait until Marceline continues. “I guess it’s different for me. Mortality is different for me. It was natural, expected. I never wanted to live forever, y’know? I never wanted to be stuck like this — this, like, suspended animation. That was a choice that was taken from me. And so much messed up stuff happened to me when I was a kid and so much of it was out of my control and I just — I don’t know if I <em>want </em>to be, like, a regular human again. Or if I’m <em>ever </em>going to want it but I guess I just want to know that if I decide to change that, for myself, that it would, uh. Be possible, first of all, I guess. And that you would be part of it with me. For me.”</p><p>Terror still glides slick and oily under Bonnie’s skin. Her heart’s still racing in her chest, stomach leaden at the thought that maybe Marceline is just softening the blow now, is downplaying what she meant because Bonnie freaked out earlier and now she thinks this is just what Bonnie needs to hear. She tries to force the thoughts out as the scenarios crowd her mind, one after another; different things Marceline could be keeping from her, truths she’s burying to avoid a fight, all the ways she could slip right through Bonnie’s fingers before she even had a chance to know it was happening.</p><p>What she wants, more than anything, is to take Marceline by the shoulders, to look her in the eye and explain calmly and rationally why this would be a collossally bad idea. Why curing her vampirism is short-sighted, logically flawed, cowardly, idiotic, breathtakingly <em>selfish—</em></p><p>Marceline waits, watching her gravely, lip chewed raw between her fangs and Bonnie’s whole body throbs, one big bruise under the weight of this conversation.</p><p>“Please,” Marceline says, quiet. Earnest.</p><p>Bonnie has enough self-awareness to know this is a make or break moment. This is more than whether Marceline will someday decide she’s lived enough and is ready to move on. To become human again and age and grow frail and wither and die and leave Bonnie utterly, completely alone.</p><p>This is Marceline asking to be trusted. To be empowered. To have Bonnie on her side.</p><p>Bonnie leans forward, free hand cupping Marceline’s jaw gently, tipping her face slightly down so she can catch her lips in a kiss.</p><p>They haven’t done this much, not recently. They’ve been on better terms for years now, slowly growing closer, but this physical intimacy is something they’ve both held back from. The touching, the closeness, the passion between them had always been so overwhelming, so volatile when they’d been together before. It felt like too much of a risk, too dangerous an element to add back into their still mending relationship.</p><p>But if Marcie can risk asking Bonnie to help end her life — someday, maybe, possibly, in a way — then what’s the point of holding back from this any longer?</p><p>What could be more sacred and more intimate than giving Marceline control of her mortality?</p><p>What could she <em>possibly </em>risk in the face of that?</p><p>The answer is immediate in the sigh Marceline heaves into Bonnie’s mouth, the gentle curling of her hand in Bonnie’s hair, the answering slant of her mouth against Bonnie’s.</p><p>There’s nothing bigger than this in Bonnie’s world. Nothing more important.</p><p>And she’s grown enough, has lost enough by now, to understand that sometimes responsibility demands sacrifice. And there’s no responsibility dearer to her than the one she holds for Marceline’s heart. No sacrifice too big to make for her sake.</p><p>The kiss is sweet, and soft, and unhurried. So gentle it surprises Bonnie, who had forgotten it could ever be like this between them at all.</p><p>When Marceline finally pulls back she’s smiling, if a little shakily. “So, that’s a yeah?”</p><p>Bonnie snorts, dropping her forehead into the crook of Marceline’s neck. “Yeah, ya goof. That’s a yes. Whatever you need, Marcie.”</p><p>Marceline cranes her neck, pulling Bonnie closer and dropping a kiss on her temple. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”</p><p><em>Me neither,</em> Bonnie thinks, but doesn’t say.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>follow me on <a href="http://explosionshark.tumblr.com">tumblr</a> to read more prompt fills that won't make it to ao3 and/or to read shit posts i like</p></blockquote></div></div>
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